“He’s no friend of ours,” said the youngest.
“He has no choice but to be our friend,” said the tall one. “It’s in the way he was made.”
“He does what he wants,” said the young one.
Rigg was merely listening to them, letting them talk to him; Param understood why. He was learning vital information with everything they said. If he probed, he might not learn as much, because they would become more aware of him. Param wished she knew how he had explained who they were, these four who had suddenly appeared inside the stockade. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was enough for these women that the strangers wore no facemasks.
“We can’t build the city without him,” complained the old woman. “But he won’t let us make a wall of fieldsteel—this miserable stockade is all we can make without him. We’ve depended too much on him! We haven’t any skills in our own hands.”
Param guessed who “he” was; who but Vadesh himself? No one else could build with fieldsteel; no one else could create a beam of pure heat, then bar the people of the city from using it themselves.
“He does us no good,” said the young one. “The city is eternal, but what good is that when we can’t defend it?”
“We can’t live anywhere else,” said the tall one. “Where would we get safe water? We’d become like them.” Having seen the men with facemasks, Param understood the woman’s dread and loathing.
Finally the old woman took notice of Param. “Are you his sister?” she asked.
Param had forgotten how much Rigg resembled her. “I am,” she said.
“I wish I could offer help,” said Rigg.
The tall woman pointed at the stockade, where Loaf and Olivenko stood. “They look like stout soldiers, and well-armed.”
“But inexperienced against such a quick and clever enemy,” said Param. “They would be beaten almost at once.”
“Where are you from?” asked the old woman suspiciously. “You speak like feeble-minded children.”
“Your language is new to us,” said Rigg.
“Our language?” said the young woman incredulously. “Is there another? They don’t speak at all, except the grunting of beasts. Where are you from?”
“Beyond the Wall,” said Param.
“The future,” said Rigg.
Param found it interesting that while they had chosen different truths to tell, neither she nor Rigg had thought of lying.
It made little difference. The women drew together as they shrank back from Param and Rigg. “Liars,” said the old woman.
“Spies,” said the young one.
But the tall one, though she was as frightened as the others, still cast a hungry, appraising gaze upon them. “The future? Then you know. Do we win this war?”
Rigg turned to Param and addressed her in the elevated language of the court. “I have learned all that I think we can. Let us get the others.”
Param glanced at the women. They had not been through the Wall; they didn’t know the language Rigg was using, and it must be frightening to hear speech they couldn’t understand. “Aren’t you going to answer her?” said Param.
“I don’t know the answer.”
“We know that the city is empty!”
“But is it this war that empties it? Telling her might change things.”
“All of her people are dead for ten thousand years. Any change would be better.”
“I can think of worse outcomes,” said Rigg. He glanced toward the stockade—toward the battle raging beyond the stockade. “What if these people despair, knowing they do not win, and so they give up and those people, the afflicted ones, survive?”
“What are you saying?” demanded the old woman.